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Ben Carson said at the CNN town hall that people should take care of each other — like they did before the days of the New Deal.

Carson talks big government, social safety net, bear attacks

By Eliza Collins

02/17/16 09:13 PM EST

Updated 02/18/16 02:18 PM EST

Ben Carson said that people should take care of each other — like they did before the days of the New Deal.

“In the old days of America when communities were separated by hundreds of miles, why were they able to thrive? Because if it was harvest time and the farmer was up in the trees picking apples and fell and broke his leg, everybody pitched in and harvested his crops for him. Somebody got killed by a bear. Everybody took care of their family. So we have a history of taking care of each other,” Carson said during the CNN Town Hall on Wednesday.

But the retired neurosurgeon said something changed in the 1920s, presumably a reference to the New Deal, the package of Great Depression-era aid programs that grew into the modern U.S. social safety net.

“The government started getting involved in everything,” Carson said. Then he said when Lyndon B. Johnson became president in the 1960s the government was making big promises."

“Everything is not only worse, it’s much worse,” Carson said. “I wish the government would read the Constitution. I think that would probably help quite a bit.”